Like many of you, I have been wondering what on earth all the vitriolic Axiom-bashing that is showing up on this message board and others is all about. We’ve always followed the same principals of loudspeaker design, and although some aspects may not be considered mainstream, we firmly believe in taking a scientific approach to loudspeaker design, regardless of what the ‘flavour of the month’ is with reviewers, competitors’ products, or trends on message boards. We stick by our research and that makes us unpopular from time to time. That is all part of doing business and of being true to our ethos.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way, and today I have some very disturbing news I feel obligated to share. The rampant bashing we have been receiving for some time now has left many of you - and myself - scratching our heads as to what in the world would be causing it. We are beginning to find the answer, and the news is quite shocking. We have evidence that shows that at least one of the bashers, JBall, sends his or her posts from the same IP address that is used by Gene DellaSala from Audioholics when he logs onto our message boards, as well as when he sends emails to Axiom. This has led me to believe that JBall is in fact Gene himself.

As I have mentioned before I was bothered after the opening of the Audioholics store by the fact that we were sending money and product for supposed objective independent review to a competitor in the marketplace. The fact that Audioholics was purporting to be an independent source of reliable commentary while also building up what would best be described as a house brand speaker line did not sit well with me either.

There was some talk after the store first opened of selling our products in the store, which would then at least change it to a quasi-dealer relationship. After much pondering on this we decided that it simply did not fit with our business model and in the summer of 2010 we cut our ties with Audioholics. This resulted in Gene threatening me by saying that he had built the Axiom brand and he could destroy it.

We do have further evidence that shows the scope of the problem is larger than just the postings being made by the IP sharing JBall but we do not yet know the full extent of how deep it really goes. We may or may not investigate it further as we are really not people who wish to spend time delving into this kind of pure negativity. We really just want to have fun with our customers and provide the best products and service we can offer. The majority of people we come in contact with every day are happy with their Axiom products and their experiences with our company, and those are the people we wish to focus on.

I guess if I had to look for a positive in all of this it would be that there is a certain odd flattery in realizing your competition fears what you are doing so much that they would resort to these kinds of tactics. More importantly, I want to thank those of you who have braved the wrath of these people here and on other message boards. I know how draining the negativity can be. I appreciate your support.

In closing I would actually like to extend my apologies to those who make legitimate posts in our forum with real opinions that are not favourable towards us. We watch these sorts of things as they can contain information that leads to product and service improvements. I am not talking about the endless repeaters of the same negative opinion over and over again that we do not agree with and therefore are not going to change. Or those who bash with no firsthand experience with the product they are bashing. That sort of behavior is not constructive to anyone. But to all the others making constructive points, that we need to either respond to with our reasons or change in order to keep making the products and overall experience with Axiom better.

JB, I can assure you they did a complete job investigating and confirming before creating this post. Your comments make no sense, actually the other party is the one that is being unprofessional and running Axiom down for a year or so under a fake name under a rock.